Auroville’s development: the potential and the blockages

David has been inspired to continue his research into Spiral Dynamics due to his sense that there is a strong correlation between the stages of the spiral and Sri Aurobindo’s descriptions of the different ‘Ages’ in The Human Cycle.

Recently, a Supreme Court judge stated that Auroville should follow a path of ‘sustainable development’ where protection of the environment should be balanced with the need for ‘industrialisation’. What insights could Spiral Dynamics provide regarding development in Auroville?

Auroville Today: How does Spiral Dynamics view a term like ‘sustainable development’?

David: From the point of view of Spiral Dynamics, each person will interpret words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘development’ differently depending on where they choose to set their priorities in each moment based on the spiral. For example, taking the three stages that are most prevalent in the world today, from the Blue perspective ‘development’ is primarily focused on celebrating the collective religious values of the culture in question; in Orange, ‘development’ means ‘material abundance’ and ‘success’ at the individual level; whereas the Green view of development expresses itself more in terms of building cohesive communities and protecting the environment within which those communities can flourish.

The same differences in interpretation can be seen in how people understand the term ‘collaboration’. In Blue, which tends to seek order through control, it means ‘work with us on our terms’ as defined by an authority; in Orange collaboration entails balancing different professions and the skills they bring to the table; whereas in Green it usually means trying to reach decisions through consensus whilst giving every person a voice.

So to be able to have a dialogue using terms such as these you need to begin by defining what each of the terms means on different levels of the spiral and then one can see how the various stake-holders might choose to relate to them.

When we talk about the need for development, do any of the existing models fit Auroville? Or is Auroville an exception and therefore requiring a very different approach?

Auroville has been a global exception since its inauguration, and it very much has the potential to continue to be so. However, the issue as I see it today is that if we continue to concentrate too much on development as perceived from just one or two stages of the spiral at the expense of a more integral development (at Yellow and beyond), we may well miss the opportunity to continue to evolve in an exceptional way.

When a group of us made a public presentation a year or two ago in the Unity Pavilion, that was our focus. We were proposing that Auroville could make the leap to Yellow, to a more integral level where we can begin to drop all our personal beliefs and listen and learn from what everybody else is saying. I believe this is the leap that Aurovilians are being asked to make today as a first step towards the next level, Turquoise, which I suspect might well be the start of the “Spiritual Age” as defined by Sri Aurobindo. But the longer we continue to be splintered as we are today, the longer might be the delay before we achieve this.

I believe that the community as a whole still has the potential to make that leap. When we gave that presentation, my hope was to inspire a sufficient percentage of people to hold the middle ground, and to be able to engage with the different perspectives – the need for protection of the environment, the active promotion of city development, as well as integrating the deeper wider vision of what Mother has described – and out of this synthesis something new would emerge. The hope was that this approach might generate sufficient dynamism whilst addressing the key issues of all the different perspectives, and that most Aurovilians who are holding positions that they consider important might then feel safer moving closer to this new centre of activity.

So what do you think are the main threats Auroville is facing today?

The main threat from outside is the rampant uncontrolled development that seems to have become super-charged since the pandemic lock-downs, and from inside it is our incapacity as a community to properly address this threat because of our present fragmentation.

The centre of gravity, the status quo, for most of Auroville’s history was Green, and many of the people who are now prioritising the urban development of Auroville understandably felt blocked not only by Green’s apparent resistance to wider development in general but by the use of consensus decision-making which was often used to block progress as well. An entrenched status quo was empowering many of those who had been here longest to keep blocking development – the ‘not in my backyard’ attitude which can often manifest as the shadow side of the Green stage. The result was that the development which did happen was mostly piecemeal and relatively uncoordinated.

Auroville was inaugurated in 1968 at the peak of the latest Green wave, which had actually started towards the end of the nineteenth century. I would suggest that the majority of Aurovilians who were attracted to come and live here in the early days were passionately centred on Green values. They were willing to be out there in the blazing sun every day on a fairly barren plateau, digging holes and planting trees, exactly because of that passion and dedication. Since then, however, the successful creation of a vibrant eco-system has attracted many people centred at other stages of the spiral to also join.

Yellow can often show up in those individuals and groups who are exploring different ways of meeting and decision-making as well as those leading innovative new units, whilst Blue shows up in those Aurovilians who adhere strongly to what the Integral Yoga says regarding how Auroville should develop. Crucially, however, Auroville has also more and more home-grown Orange as many of the youth who grew up here wish to increase their material prosperity as they prepare to start families of their own. In the meantime India itself obviously hasn’t stood still.

In 1968 when Auroville was founded, our host nation was centred primarily in Blue. However, in the last 50 years, and particularly since 1991 when the country opened up to outside investment, the once dominant Blue has evolved into a very dynamic Orange. Today the outside energies that we see coming into Auroville are mostly this, manifesting not only in many new restaurants and enterprises on the road from Certitude to Kuilapalayam but also in the claiming of land for large-scale private use. For Orange primarily wants tangible things – more money, a new bike, a nice house etc. – and it can come across as trying to co-opt whatever it needs to achieve these objectives; whereas Green tends to focus much more on experiences, on protecting the environment, and it generally wishes to connect with people rather than compete with them, unless its own core values seem to be threatened.

So the problem for Auroville’s wider vision today isn’t just that we have the internal struggle with different groups of Aurovilians who are sure that they are holding the right position, but we also have the external development pressure coming from an empowered ‘Orange’ India. Actually, regarding the latter it is somewhat of a miracle that these forces were held at bay for as long as they were. This was mainly due, I think, to the influence and wisdom of Dr. Karan Singh who was chairman of the Governing Board for many years.

I believe we could have used that opportunity that we were graced with to make that leap to Yellow. But we didn’t. That’s why I fear we might have missed the boat. But who knows, perhaps it can still happen.

How?

There are basically two possibilities. It could still happen if the Governing Board would demonstrate a balanced support of a more holistic process – because the recent overwhelming focus on urban development at the exclusion of some of the other values has only been possible due to what comes across as the full support of the Governing Board. Alternatively, and leading to a much more healthy outcome in the long-run, if those Aurovilians who are presently choosing to prioritise development became aware that a more holistic alternative might well improve what is being manifested, then the community as a whole could come together and approach the Governing Board as one voice to request their support.

Don Beck, who helped to develop the theory of Spiral Dynamics, put it quite nicely. He said that you always have to crouch down before you can leap forward. So, metaphorically, one could imagine that this is what has been happening over the last three years.

Having said that, it is also quite possible that those Aurovilians who are focused on city development will simply keep pushing on with what they are doing. For, based upon previous experience, they are understandably afraid that they will lose out again if they participate in any form of collaborative process because any collective process reminds them too much of Green, where just a few individuals can block progress. They also remember what happened with the skin of the Matrimandir when so many different people had different opinions about what should be done. And many Aurovilians seem to believe that the present Matrimandir only manifested because a certain group kept pushing for a certain solution.

Being an architect myself, when it comes to the Matrimandir I would actually agree that they were right. However, my concern is that the lesson they draw from this experience is that they shouldn’t include the community in designing the town. I suspect that they believe that if they push through their present concept they will get the same success as they did with the Matrimandir. However, even under normal circumstances there is a massive difference between designing a building and designing a town, let alone the extra challenge laid down by Mother in building the Galaxy Model.

Yet the proponents of the present path of development claim it is based upon Roger’s Galaxy concept.

Well, I would suggest that although the geometry does bear a passing resemblance to the Galaxy Model concept, it is in fact just the Nebula model with curves.

All you have today is a series of roads with some buildings strung along them, similar to strip developments in North America. But unlike the Galaxy Model, the buildings are rarely interconnected, there are as yet no urban spaces, and the priority would appear to be clearly for traffic and not people.

What is happening at present is a mere shadow of what Mother must have envisioned when she blessed the Galaxy Model, and, to be honest, I’ve still not managed to figure out why Roger dropped the original idea and supported modifications which completely changed the spirit of the original. Did he feel he had to give up because of all the blockages he experienced and he just wanted to get something, anything, manifested?

In fact, if you listen to Roger’s early interviews, he clearly stated that the Galaxy is only a springboard, a starting point for the design of Auroville which needs to evolve with the consciousness of the Aurovilians, and this actually fits very nicely with the Spiral Dynamics / Human Cycle evolutionary paradigm that I’m describing.

Interestingly, from that perspective, I think the four models of the town plan which Roger and his team produced – the Grid Model, Nebula, the ‘Yin-Yang/Macro’ model and the Galaxy – actually reflect evolution of the collective consciousness: each one of them is a step on the spiral. The Grid Model expresses basic Orange values – where the geometry is very mental and rational – while I think the Nebula Model expresses Green quite well in that it is trying to introduce spirituality through Mother’s symbol, along with the Matrimandir at the centre. The Yin-Yang model is more complex and incorporates Yellow, but for me the Galaxy is really trying to capture Turquoise: Roger and his team were very much channeling something, calling something down, when they came up with this.

What is it about the Galaxy concept that you find so inspiring?

The concept is so complex, so rich, and the need for collaboration just to attempt to build it is so immense that it presents us with this amazing challenge. If we want to build this, we have to do the work, both inner and outer, otherwise it won’t manifest. And that work requires collaboration, because as each part of the Galaxy relates to the whole, and because nothing can be done in one place without an awareness of the whole, we cannot keep working in separate pockets to manifest it.

But is collaboration enough to build something like this?

The level of collaboration required would already indicate a shift in consciousness to or towards Yellow. I think there are a significant number of Aurovilians already centred at Yellow, and these people have already come together, at different moments and at different times, to develop new initiatives and test out new models.

But Yellow is still not enough to build the Galaxy, as Yellow still lacks a certain ability to integrate the more subtle aspects of a potential Yogic town: Don Beck described Yellow as ‘left brain with feeling’. Also Yellow, since each respective stage oscillates between a focus on the personal and then the collective, follows on from collective Green and is centred on the individual. So if we are here for a collective evolution, we need to set our sights on the next stage: Turquoise. Turquoise is profoundly intuitive and, in contrast to Yellow, Beck referred to it as ‘right brain with data’. At this level you are tapping into something more subtle. It is what Sri Aurobindo was referring to when he speaks of the higher mind, the illumined mind, and the intuitive mind, where something higher is being called down.

However, I think that so far any experience of Turquoise has also been mainly happening on an individual level. So this is the challenge which Mother placed before us. This is the shift in consciousness we need to make in order to manifest the Galaxy Model as originally envisioned by her through Roger as well as her vision of Auroville as a crucible for a true Human Unity.

However, there is no template for this, no ‘Dummies Guide’! This is why the collective shift won’t necessarily happen in our lifetimes. It is similar to the building of a medieval cathedral which took many generations, but today we have been asked to use the building of a city as the necessary catalyst to build a metaphorical ‘cathedral of Human Unity’, because we’ve already got 50 years behind us of manifesting the framework and the collective culture which allows for the possible emergence of something new. Mother gave us both a goal – building the town – and a description of what the end result might look like in the shape of “To be a True Aurovilian”, as well as a formula of how to get there in the Charter: something which is so beautifully vast and yet so well defined that if one embodies it fully, one wouldn’t need anything else to ultimately achieve her vision.

What part, if any, can the government play in this?

The Governing Board’s challenge, as I see it, would be to protect the space for this long-term process to unfold. However, the danger is that if the Governing Board chooses to prioritise just one aspect of Auroville’s development at the expense of the other parts, even though that elusive Second Tier emergence (ie Yellow and Turquoise) might be primed to happen, it won’t be able to.

Even without careful stewarding Auroville will certainly ‘develop’. The last fifty years have created an incredibly attractive environment, along with a powerful sacred centre that will continue to act as a magnet for many decades to come.

Unfortunately, the tendency of the spiral for any manifestation that manages to break free of the stage at which the mainstream culture is centred, is to eventually be over-run and taken over by those larger more powerful forces. It is simply the ebb and flow of the Prakriti and the Purusha working on us.

The question is whether the government in its wisdom chooses to embrace the unknown through the long-term vision of Mother and support the unfolding of the original experiment, or whether pragmatism and a more short-term need for tangible results wins out.

On a final note, I believe that one of the reasons that Mother said ‘No politics in Auroville’ was precisely to avoid the short-term nature of politically-motivated decision making. But if any governance structure in the world is capable of embracing a wider long-term vision grounded in spiritual principles, then I believe that here in India we have been in the right place all along.